Chapter 159: Vigorous Change PART 1
After returning back to the mountains of bones, Fei found the Priestess and the “obscene” old man crawling up at the middle of the “mountain” trying to dig up something. From their expressions, they looked like they were two abandoned dogs who were digging up treasures from a pile of garbage. Under the mountain, there was already a temporary tent constructed close to it. There was even a blacksmith forge, anvil and all the necessities required for blacksmithing set up in front of the tent. With help from a few female rogues, the female Blacksmith Charsi was already swinging her hammer and forging something with tinking sounds resonating in this space. In front of her, there was already a big pile of white bone weapons.
The heavy magic hammer was very agile in Charsi’s hands as it turned into a dark shadow. Fei couldn’t even spot it. This beautiful female blacksmith was definitely used to forging these bones; when she swung the hammer, Fei felt like he was watching a graceful angel dance. Her red hair jumped in the air like cute fairies and made the audience feel like they were watching a dazzling beauty.
After Fei completed all the quests in 【Rogue Encampment】with all seven of his characters, everyone in 【Rogue Encampment】had their skills leveled up; Charsi’s forging skills, Akara’s potion and scroll creating skills, Old man Cain’s magic researching and item identifying skills, and the fatty Gheed’s lying and cheating skills were all upgraded. Therefore, Fei already expected Charsi to get used to forging these [Remains of Demons]. This female blacksmith’s forging skilled leveled up at least one level, and she was able to forge more powerful items and magic items.
“Mister Fei, you finally returned?” After seeing Fei walking back, Charsi waved and said to him excitedly, “Aunt Akara and Mister Cain made new discoveries. Look around at these stone pillars; it’s unbelievable that they are all made from 【Black Stone Essence】ores…” As she said, she took out a piece of black stone and showed Fei. “Look, it is the magic metal that only exists in legends. Although it’s not as hard as [Remains of Demons], it has a better plasticity for being forged into armor. On the Rogue Continent, many legendary weapons and items were made from this rare metal!”
“Uh… I didn’t expect that this space would be filled with treasures. No wonder why this is called the Mythical Ruins that could create numerous super powerful empires!” Fei thought as he grabbed the stone and rubbed it with his fingers. As he was feeling the firmness and coldness from the stone and his joy, he suddenly thought of something and asked, “Wait, then how do we forge these ores? Are there some f*cked up requirements?”
“Bingo! You got it this time!” The old man Cain suddenly appeared behind Fei with a brand new bone cane that Charsi made for him. Fei turned around and got scared for a second. This old man was completely white; white hair, white beard, white cane, and a white robe. If this old man also jumped around, he would find the White Emissaries from Ancient Chinese Legends and compete on who better satisfied the job criteria. The old man looked around at the huge stone pillars with greedy lights shining from his eyes as he said, “These 【Black Stone Essence】are hard to forge. If you want to extract these essences, you will need to use the fire from the deepest part of hell – 【Flame of Earth Core】!”
“Flame of Earth Core?”
“Eh, it is a terrifying flame that uses the demon’s forces as fuel and has devastating power. According to rumors, it was said that this flame could burn everything in this world. According to legends, there is a 【River of Flames】at a place called 【Pandemonium Fortress】that is at the far east from 【Rogue Encampment】, and the river is filled with 【Flame of Earth Core】that will continue burning forever. If you want to forge these rare ores, you will need to get that flame!”
“It sounds very complicated!”
Fei rubbed his chin out of habit as he spoke. If he remember everything correctly, there was a place called 【Pandemonium Fortress】in the Diablo World. That was the fourth map and hardest map in the Diablo World after he completed the first three maps: 【Rogue Encampment】,【Lut Gholein】, and 【Kurast Dock】. The second quest in that map was called 【The Hellforge】, and he would have to go to a river called 【River of Flames】that was located in a dark underground world there orange lava floated everywhere. The fire in that place was probably the 【Flames of Earth Core】that the old man Cain was talking about. But it was way too hard for Fei to get that fire! Fei just entered the second map【Lut Gholein】and was still far away from the fourth map 【Pandemonium Fortress】; the most optimistic estimate would be a year before he could get to that place.
“It is really hard; almost no one was able to get from Rogue Continent to 【Pandemonium Fortress】alive in the legends. However, hehe, the situation isn’t as bad since we are in the place that you call Mythical Ruins. Come and talk a look…” The old man Cain poked his white bone cane into the cracks on the ground as he said. “There is something very interesting!”
Fei had already paid attention to the strange ground; he had noticed that there were cracks thinner than the width of two fingers everywhere on the ground, and it looked like the river bed dried up after a big drought, creating cracks all over the place. Also, what was different was that there were dark red lights flashing though these cracks irregularly, and some heat would come up from these cracks… “Could these strange cracks be related to 【Flames of Earth Core】?” Fei thought.
“This really is a strange space. I felt some sensation of 【Flames of Earth Core】from these cracks. According to legends, some rare treasures that were formed naturally would form together. Since there are a ton of 【Black Stone Essence】, then it is not too surprising to see 【Flames of Earth Core】here too. However, these cracks are too deep and the ground here contains many hard stones. It would be hard to pull up some 【Flames of Earth Core】from these cracks!” The old man stroked his long white beard as he shook his head and said, “I will try to place a small magic array on the ground to see if I can pull some 【Flames of Earth Core】up.”
After getting more than a dozen various colored rubies, the old man started to use his white bone cane as a pen and slowly drew a magic array on the ground. The cane that was made from [Remains of Demon] was very easy to use. Cain felt like his magic energy flowed easily in the cane, and the cane even had some additional benefits towards drawing magic arrays. One end of the cane easily drew out a series of delicate, yet fine patterns on the ground smoothly on the hard stone-like ground. Fei had to admit that old man Cain’s magic array knowledge was at a very high level.
This was also a rare learning opportunity for Fei, so he observed earnestly.
After following the Priestess around, Fei had learned a lot of knowledge about magic, and he had acquired some basics regarding magic arrays. He was no longer the brainless idiot who only knew how to cast all kinds of magic spells, but didn’t have a clue about the fundamentals and theories. There were six kinds of magic arrays: Five-pointed Non-elemental Arrays, Six-pointed Elemental Arrays, Assembly Arrays, decomposed Arrays, Symbol Arrays, and Physical Combination Arrays. Each one of them had different effects and different powers. Because 【Flame of Earth Core】contained the power of the fire element, the magic array that the old man Cain was drawing on the ground was a combination of Six-pointed Elemental Array and Physical Combination Array. During the process, Cain put away his “obscene” expression, and a rare serious and careful expression took over. He was very concentrated as he was trying to avoid condensing the magic elements at the wrong locations, which could cause an explosion and put everyone in danger.
After half an hour, a mystic magic array that was about a meter in diameter was finally engraved onto the ground.
The outer-most layer of magic arrays was almost always circles; circles represented circulation and could prevent magic power from dispersing into the air. Inside the circle, there were magic loops; they were the conductors that made sure magic power would flow smoothly in the array. The more the magic looped, the more complicated and higher level the magic array was, and the more magic power and energy was required to drew them. Normally, gem powder grinded from Magic Stones was needed to draw Magic Arrays, but since Cain had the white bone cane made from [Remains of Demons], he was able to skip this step. Also, the power of a magic array was dependent on the quality of the gem powder and the mage’s magic power… It didn’t matter if it was on Azeroth Continent or in the Diablo World, these were all the basic knowledge and fundamentals of magic arrays.
The old man Cain was so tired that he was breathing with his tongue out like a dead dog. After some rest, he carefully placed six red [Chipped Rubies] into the six corners of the Six-Pointed Elemental Array and followed it up by injecting weak magic power into it.
Then, something magical happened –
The magic array was stimulated and started to function. The Rubies had a light red fire flashing on them as magic energy surged strictly according to the patterns and loops on the ground. A series of thin red lines started to appear, and they all merged at the center of the array. A red light suddenly emitted from the magic array and shot up towards the sky, and a huge suction force and vortex arose from the magic array. After the ground shook for several minutes, a light orange-red flame gradually appeared from the very center of the array.
“It came out… Hahaha, look! It is really the 【Flame of Earth Core】!”
The old man Cain was so excited that he started to stomp his feet forcefully on the ground. But soon, he was like a crowing rooster who had its neck pinched as his cheers instantly paused. At the critical moment, for some reason, all the lights that were emitting from the magic array dimed down and soon lost their magic energy surge. As a result, the weak orange-red flames that finally appeared after all this work disappeared from the air.
“Ah, the level of these magic gems are not high enough…” After old man Cain walked up to the array to inspect it, he realized that all six [Chipped Rubies] were depleted of magic energy and turned into ordinary grey stones.
“Then I have no solution then. I don’t have six higher leveled rubies. Let’s try tomorrow!” As Fei saw this scene, he suddenly remembered that he had copied down the magic arrays from the stone rooms on the other side of the abyss, so he took it out to show this magic maniac.
“Uh? What is this? Strange, this pattern is very familiar to me…”
Old man Cain’s occupational disease instantly appeared. He had this habit; every time he found something that interested him, he would enter a mad state where he would ignore everyone. Unless he actually figured out what he had in his hands, he wouldn’t acknowledge anyone. Therefore, he ditched Fei who was standing beside him for an answer and turned around and went through the teleportation portal far away to go back to 【Rogue Encampment】to research and study the magic arrays on the sheet.
Fei turned around, and he saw Priestess Akara who was stilling on the mountain trying to select top quality bones greedily. He shook his head as he saw this and went back to 【Rogue Encampment】as well.
For the next five or six days, Fei’s findings and discovery speed toned down; he made no new discoveries.
After he formed enough [Perfect Gems] by using the Horadric Cube, he returned to the corridors on the other side of chilling abyss. There were some changes after he placed five [Perfect Gems] into the five spherical stone pillars and activated all five magic arrays. A crystal blue pattern appeared on the stone tablet that had no words on it. No matter how hard Fei tried to understand it, he got nowhere. From the first impression, he felt like it was a magic array, but it couldn’t be further away from the truth. The pattern didn’t have a circular outer layer, and all the magic loops on it were different. It was probably an unknown map and not a magic array. With all the thin paths and complicated lines, it looked like a circuit board that Fei studied in his previous life. What was special about this map was that there was a little eye-catching red dot.
Other than that, nothing was out of the ordinary.
Fei could not understand the meaning of the patterns on the stone tablet, and the functionality of the five spherical stone pillars seemed to just activate the stone tablet so this pattern would show. Other than that, no matter how Fei tried to stimulate the magic arrays on these five spherical stone pillars, nothing new appeared. Old man Cain was still studying that five magic arrays that Fei copied down onto a sheet; from his initial research, he thought that these magic arrays were supporting magic arrays for some kind of teleportation array. These arrays were missing a very important center piece, so they couldn’t be operated. In the meantime, Fei had taken Priestess Akara to the stone room to check out the mysterious pattern, but she wasn’t able to make any discoveries as well.
After all this, Fei had to be patient and take it one step at a time.
For the next ten days or so, Fei took half of his day exploring tens of thousands of corridors on the other side of the abyss to see if he was able to find the correct path to get out the maze and check out the big secret that was hiding behind it. Although he wasn’t progressing at a high speed, he was making some progress. From Fei’s estimation, after more than ten days, he might actually find the right path. Other than that, he had explored the big mysterious space and found that this space that was at least several dozen square kilometers big. It contained chilling abysses on all three sides. Except for the wall that was connected to the underground cave where Fei came in from, all the other three sides were cut off completely. This space was U-shaped.
Of course, except for exploring the mysterious space, Fei didn’t forget to kill monsters in the Diablo World to level up his skills.
After fifteen days, the first two quests in the second map 【Lut Gholein】were completely by all seven of his characters. His Barbarian Character was level 27; his sorceress Character was level 27 as well; his Amazon Character was level 26, as well as his Paladin Character and his Assassin Character; his Druid Character followed at level 25; and his Necromancer Character came in last at level 24. Fei’s strength improvement was very obvious, and his overall fighting ability approached a mid-tier five star warrior; he even had the confidence to challenge a top-tier five star warrior that was one rank above his level.
Other than killing monsters and trying to level up every day, Fei would switch to Assassin Mode and sense how the Zen Energy was flowing in his body so he could reference it with the training scrolls from his storage space and add new energy connection channels to them and create brand new energy training scrolls.
After fifteen days, Fei had made more improvements to [Lightning Speed Fists] and created several other new energy training scrolls. After he tested, experimented and refined them himself, he gave them to Elena so she could take them to [Castle of Heroes] and give them to Fei’s preselected henchmen.
When Fei was working hard and improving his skills and Chambord’s strength, the other people weren’t relaxing and chilling around.
In the same fifteen days, old man Cain had used five [Perfect Rubies] to operate the magic array and finally pulled the legendary【Flames of Earth Core】out of the cracks. He gave it to the female blacksmith Charsi so she could start forging 【Black Stone Essence】ores. Charsi didn’t disappoint Fei and extracted a ton of pure 【Black Stone Essence】, forged it onto [Remains of Demons], and created a ton of pure black armor and weapons. This way, the white colored[Remains of Demons] armor would be covered so the soldiers and commanders of Chambord wouldn’t look too terrifying. If Chambord was deemed a kingdom of the undead, the Holy Church would definitely take action. Since【Black Stone Essence】didn’t take away from the magic and warrior energy conductivity of the weapons made from [Remains of Demons], Fei put all these items back into his storage ring in satisfaction.
The obscene old man Cain and Priestess Akara spent most of their time selecting the best [Remains of Demons] since the bones had different qualities. Except for when they were called to [Castle of Heroes] to lecture the first generation of University Students, they spent all their time here selecting and organizing all the [Remains of Demons], and they took these bones back to 【Rogue Encampment】to store according to their quality.
Time slowly passed. When Fei was about two-thirds done exploring the beehive-like corridors on the wall, the mysterious space finally had some changes.
“What is this? I feel like the temperature is getting hotter and hotter…”
Female blacksmith Charsi who was extracting 【Black Stone Essence】with the help from 【Flames of Earth Core】and several female rogues frowned as she looked around curiously. As a talented forger and blacksmith, her sensitivity to temperature was far superior to ordinary people. Even the slightest temperature change wouldn’t escape Charsi’s senses.
As they heard what Charsi said, the female rogues stopped what they were working on and looked around as well. A loli-like girl who had brown hair suddenly looked at the cracks on the ground and pointed at them as she gasped, “Yeah! Look! There is steam coming out of the cracks…”
Everyone looked at the cracks on the ground and they discovered that heat energy in the form of hot steam was slowly coming up from the cracks on the ground.
Fei lightly put his hand into the crack; he could clearly feel that the temperature coming from underground was increasing at the slow yet steady speed. In a blink of an eye, the whole mysterious space felt a little humid and hot. At this moment, Fei made another strange discovery. “Why is there so much fog in the air?”
“Fog? How could fog form in this condition?”
After Fei was stunned shortly, he thought of something and his face changed color.
Boom! The ground under Fei’s feet exploded as his body shot away like a bullet towards the chilling abyss’ defense line. As his body turned into a phantom, his voice also sounded clearly beside Charsi and female rogues’ ears. “Quickly pack up. Return to the camp in ten minutes! Don’t delay at all!”
Since no one dared to object the Supreme Leader’s voice and Charsi and the female rogues sensed the seriousness of Fei’s words, they quickly packed up the tent and the finished and work-in-progress weapons and armor. They retreated to 【Rogue Encampment】in the Diablo World from the teleportation portal.
In a few seconds, Fei had arrived beside the dark chilling abyss that was at the edge of the mysterious space.
As he expected, the chilliness around the abyss was getting greater and greater as a cold moisture that gave Fei a chill to his bones rushed out of the abyss rapidly. The cold air from the abyss and the hot air from the cracks collided into each other and created this enormous amount of fog. The two forces in the air started to fight with each other and started to create some wind…
“Wind?”
A light bulb went off in Fei’s head; in an instant, he knew how the huge amount of suction force appeared out of nowhere when he was stilling exploring the corridor that let to this place. He was very curious as to how wind could be created when there wasn’t a huge amount of air flow in here…… So this was the root to all the problem.
As Fei was thinking for the few seconds, terrifying howling noise sounded from the abyss that seemed bottomless; all these howling sounded like numerous ancient demons were roaring and struggling under the abyss. As this terrifying noise resonated in the mysterious space, numerous white hard dust-like objects shot out of the abyss with the cold and moist air. Fei grabbed onto some of them and realized that they were all chipped ice pieces. But before he could figure out where these chipped ice pieces were from, loud “booming” noises sounded around him. He looked up and saw huge pieces of ice that were the size of a large rock shoot out of the abyss and land beside him.
“Oh shit!”
This really took Fei by surprise, and he started to dodge the icy rocks.
As time passed by, the ice pieces that were shooting out of the abyss were getting bigger and bigger; from the size of a car to the size of a hill, it seemed like an invisible hand was throwing them at Fei. The terrifying cold air was rushing out of the abyss alongside the ice pieces, and a thick frost appeared on Fei’s eyebrows and hair. Fei felt like he was so cold that his nose hairs were frozen and super hard. He quickly switched to Sorcerer Mode and put on his 【Arcanna’s Tricks】item set. After he summoned a thin layer of fire magic elements around him, he finally felt some warmth.
The only thing was that the temperature of the air was dropping at a significant pace, and Fei was having a hard time blocking this cold air as a level 27 Sorceress. He was in danger of freezing to death.
Fei quickly backed off.
However, the hot steam coming from the crack under the ground was also getting stronger and stronger. At this point, red light appeared from all of the cracks, and even some orange-red flames appeared in these lights. As the hot air and cold air met in the air, a thick fog was instantly created. Soon, hail the size of beans started to fall from above and smashed down on Fei’s head… In this mysterious underground space, a storm was actually pouring.
Boom! Rumble! Rumble!
As the thunder sounded, some lightning flashed in the thick fog.
Then, the air in the mysterious space started to turn and cycle around each other crazily. Fei quickly backed off to a huge stone pillar beside the mountain of bones to hide from the strong wind. When he raised his head and looked up, what he saw shocked him…